The leaders of Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada gathered in a suburb of Russia's second city for a three-day meeting that ended Monday.
"Russia's role as a world power has been enhanced," said Sergei Markov, the director of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Studies. "Needless to say, the higher its role and the more influential Russia becomes, the more opportunities we will have to resolve dozens, hundreds and even thousands of outstanding problems."
Markov added that the summit's results were on the whole positive, especially for Russia, and said the country had coped very well with its role of summit host and president.
He also said Russia had advanced it positions on the summit's central issue: energy security.
"There was no conflict here. There was a serious and substantive discussion that even pointed to a certain measure of rapprochement between energy producers and consumers, as represented in this case by Russia and the other summit participants, respectively," Markov said.
